Ornette Coleman, Skies of America - 41m 34s

Tracks & Durations

1. Skies of America	2:49
2. Native Americans	1:10
3. The Good Life	1:34
4. Birthdays and Funerals	3:13
5. Dreams	0:51
6. Sounds of Sculpture	1:20
7. Holiday for Heroes	1:09
8. All of My Life	3:08
9. Dancers	1:17
10. The Soul Within Woman	0:47
11. The Artist in America	3:59
12. The New Anthem	0:31
13. Place in Space	2:44
14. Foreigner in a Free Land	1:19
15. Silver Screen	1:10
16. Poetry	1:15
17. The Men Who Live in the White House	2:48
18. Love Life	4:34
19. The Military	0:32
20. Jam Session	0:40
21. Sunday in America	4:31

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Review

Where others have seen musical boundaries, Ornette Coleman has always found possibilities--from his original conception of free jazz and the classic Atlantic recordings of 1959-61 to the use of electric guitars and funk rhythms in the later Prime Time. While the pure cry of the blues is an integral part of his music, he has also immersed himself in formal composition, writing for wind and string ensembles as well as large orchestra. Skies of America is his most ambitious work, a full-length symphony in one movement. This CD reissues the 1972 version performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with conductor David Meaghan, the work's only commercial recording. It was a performance fraught with problems. While the work was planned to include Coleman's quartet, British musicians' union regulations prevented their appearance. The time limits of the LP format required that the piece be slightly abridged, and for the original issue, Columbia decided to break up the immense single movement into 21 parts. Listening to it 28 years after the original release, however, you'll find that none of that matters. Instead, it's the breadth of Coleman's vision that emerges, as he shifts and combines the playful, the somber, and the chaotic, blurring any convenient notions of the simple and the complex. Some moments will suggest Charles Ives, and others hint at inspirations in Anton Bruckner and Béla Bártok, but the cumulative impact and the evolving musical language are Coleman's own. His use of two drummers playing contrary rhythms is a brilliant stroke, one that demonstrates the rewards of the improvisation laboratory. And Coleman's own alto saxophone soars on some key movements, such as "The Artist in America" and "The Men Who Live in the White House." This CD issue has removed the brief spaces that once separated the 21 parts, restoring the single-movement work that Coleman intended. Stuart Broomer

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